From left, Alison Lewis, Global CMO of Johnson & Johnson, and John Rudaizky, Global Brand & External Communications Leader of EY.Rudaizky: "The CEO passionately believes in [our] brand as a driver of growth and I think you get the best creativity when the CEO believes in the brand. The biggest barrier to creativity can be the leadership of the organization."

What role should the CMO take in shaping the culture of the entire organization? To address this question and more, Spencer Stuart's annual CMO Summit in 2015 featured (from left to right) Russell Weiner, president (and former CMO) of Domino's USA; Jonathan Mildenhall, CMO of Airbnb; and Jon Iwata, SVP of marketing and communications of IBM. See my full post on the Forbes CMO Network.

The last quarter of 2012 is a black hole for me. I spent most of what free time I had finalizing the research for and writing my second book, submitting the manuscript to my publisher last month. The second book was a bigger endeavor than the first, weighing in at some 42,000 words (versus the 30,000 words in my first tome), and it was a humungous task to distill and prioritize the really insightful information I obtained in my interviews with 26 thought-provoking CMOs. The best I could do was find some intriguing commonalities, discover some superb new ideas, and collect several fabulous quotes, and from that, suggest some common themes and useful actions for the CMOs of today....and tomorrow.

The biggest challenge now is settling on a title. I've moved from one working title to the next with my publisher as the nature of my book changed from "the first 90 days and beyond" for these newly-appointed CMOs, to a more fundamental and broader angle around CMOs leading change, especially since the senior marketers I interviewed were in either newly-created positions or up-levelled positions in their organizations where they are expected to drive significant change across the enterprise.

To that end, I'm taking a vote among some of my CMO friends and business associates who work most closely with CMOs, but you can vote too - here's the link: VOTE NOW.

What's interesting to note is the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, of the 25 Olympic sponsor brands that were tracked for 145 days across four social networks and five dimensions of social media performance.

Some brands like P&G, BMW, Cadbury and Cisco, benefitted from an early start, while others like adidas, British Airways, Coke, EDF and Visa, concentrated their efforts later on when Olympics fever was at a peak. By contrast, a significant number of brands did not appear to engage with social media at all, or only sporadically - which is, in this day and age, pretty unbelievable to me!

Interestingly, some social media activation was undertaken in isolation or seemingly as an afterthought, or merely as an amplifier for advertising campaigns. I've long been a proponent of integration so I found it surprising that some campaigns didn't have social fully integrated.

Promising smaller brands outperformed larger ones in the rankings by adopting what appeared to be a more proactive policy of engaging in real social dialogue, thus underlining the need for two-way communication. The brands that led the Sociagility PRINT™ rankings were those that used social media to focus on engagement - not just brand awareness.

A quick visualization of the change in rankings is below, but you can download the full report here.

When tonight's Opening Ceremony kicks off for the 2012 London Olympic Games, all eyes will be on what has been hailed in the lead-up as “the digital Olympics” or “the world’s first social Games”. And while so much will be captured during the Games themselves, the social revolution around the Games began weeks if not months ago for both athletes and sponsors.

The 25 main global and local sponsors have paid dearly for their official rights. Estimates of up to $1.6 billion have been reported. But of course sponsorship rights are just part of the cost. Much more is spent on marketing activity to maximize sponsors’ involvement and support.Advertising Age recently reported on some of the more significant campaigns, and some of these sponsors also highlighted their Olympic programs when their CMOs spoke at last month’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Coca-Cola’s Joe Tripodi showcased the brand’s “Move to the Beat” effort aimed at teens globally. Visa’s Antonio Lucio spoke about his brand featuring triumphant moments in Olympic history – and Olympic Gold Medal Winner Nadia Comaneci joined his seminar on the main stage. And P&G’s Marc Pritchard presented his brand’s “Proud Sponsor of Mom” campaign, complete with “mommymetries” aka short documentaries about mom, or mum in some parts of the world. Other brands championing major Olympic programs include McDonald’s with its “Champions of Play” campaign, GE with its Healthy Share app on Facebook, and Samsung with its US Olympic Genome Project.

All of these campaigns kicked in long before tonight's Opening Ceremony. UK social media consultancy Sociagility started tracking Olympic sponsors' social media profiles 100 days ago. At first, P&G led by a long shot, followed by BMW and Cadbury in the silver and bronze positions respectively. But last week's scorecard shows Coca-Cola winning gold, followed by British Airways and adidas. P&G had dropped down to 8th position followed by BMW as a top performer.

With such a dynamic shift on the social Olympic leader board, it will be interesting to see further movement during the Games. It may be that brands like Coke and adidas have more affinity with the Olympics versus newer sponsors like P&G, Cadbury and BMW. Only time will tell. There certainly is no shortage of activity in the main social channels, and much of the conversation is likely to be around the Olympics during the Games. In his article “Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics,” Mashable’s Sam Laird recently documented social’s growth since the last Olympics, from 6 million registered Twitter users to 500 million since 2008; and from 100 million Facebook users to more than 900 million in the same time frame. Worth checking out the Infographic he also posted on “How Mobile, Social Will Win the 2012 Olympics” sourced from Nielsen, eMarketer and Forrester.

Given an increasingly large marketing delegation, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from the creative community at large seemed to bubble under the surface of this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. But creative folks should beware – it’s the marketers who are looking for solutions, and who are responsible mainly for marshaling the creative power around and in support of their brands. 2012 certainly seemed to be “the year of the CMO” at the Festival. The sharp rise in registered delegates - from 9,000 last year to 11,000 this year - was primarily due to the number of clients attending, including delegates from 92 big-name brands and 550 marketing organizations in total. They had starring roles in seminars, forums and workshops, as well as made appearances in “fringe” events such as the McCannes Rendezvous “Cocktails & Conversations” session, and The CMO Club Roundtable. Of course many of the usual culprits were there such as P&G, Unilever and Coke, but there were several new brands on the scene too, and of course many brands doing double duty – not just there to speak or see what’s new, but also there to market to the creative community (Google, Adobe, Getty Images, Facebook and Yahoo! to name a few).

In terms of seminars, many CMOs had starring roles: Visa, Coke, P&G, Unilever and Nike. The Coke seminar with CMO Joe Tripodi (interview) was “blow away” good in every sense – content, creativity and delivery. Same with the Unilever seminar starring CMO Keith Weed and SVP of Marketing Marc Mathieu. In both cases, major announcements were made. Coke announced the latest iteration of its program “The Beat of London 2012” for the Olympics.

And Unilever launched its global Waterworks™ initiative with Facebook and PSI (Population Services International) as the world’s first open social graph, “using technology to create lasting change”.

There were forums and workshops geared for and starring senior marketers as well. Dana Anderson of Kraft led a particularly good forum on “5 Sneaky Ways to Get Great Work” which was highly entertaining, and which featured work from a range of brands, including the “Angry Pilgrims” creative for Stove Top Stuffing. The workshop led by Brand Learning’s co-founders Mhairi McEwan and Andy Bird was also tailored to the marketing community and for agency folk wanting to better understand the marketing community. Entitled “The Growth Drivers: Challenging the Way Marketers & Agencies Work Together”, it featured Kerris Bright, CMO of Ideal Standard International, Barry Herstein, recent CMO for Snapfish, and Amanda Mackenzie, CMO for Aviva.

from left: M Sachs, M Klein, M Banikarim, J Travis, W Clark

Of the “fringe” events, my panel entitled “Cocktails & Conversations at Cannes”, which was part of the McCann Rendezvous, was especially enlightening in terms of the creative process as seen through the eyes of senior marketers. Joining me were Wendy Clark of Coca-Cola, John Travis of Adobe, Maryam Banikarim of Gannett, and Michelle Klein for Smirnoff at Diageo. And we got into a whole host of issues including ownership of creativity, getting the right balance between data and creativity, experimentation and learning, and internal politics. Arun Sudhaman wrote an excellent re-cap on the session for The Holmes Report. Another “fringe” event, The CMO Club’s CMO Roundtable, was kicked off by CMO Club CEO Pete Krainik and included senior marketers from Yahoo!, Sovereign/Santander Bank, Carlsberg, Ferrero, General Mills, Heineken, Google, Beiersdorf (Nivea), Philips and Unilever. Hosted by EffectiveBrands and MOFILM, the conversation focused how to best leverage global brands, using frameworks, best practice sharing, story-telling and engaging in the conversation.

And marketing delegates were not confined to the upper echelon. 2012 was the second year for the Cannes Creative Academy for Young Marketers (under 30) for young marketers who want to learn about creativity, with Dean of the Academy, former global marketing officer for P&G Jim Stengel, who also earlier this year launched his book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies. So while creatives may not be overly enthusiastic about an increasing number of marketers flocking to the Cannes Lions, they should at least be appreciative that marketers are taking an increasing interest in creativity and how to encourage best-in-class creativity, and that they respect the Cannes Lions enough to support the Festival with truly amazing content, major announcements and thought-provoking conversations.

As Claire Beale, editor of the UK's Campaign magazine, said, "This is a serious, full-on business event that's a thoroughly justifiable way of spending a week out of the office and even a fairly justifiable way of spending several thousands of expense-account pounds [dollars]. It's perhaps not as much fun as it used to be, but then, what is?"

MaryLee Sachs

Founder • CEO BrandPie Inc.

In addition to writing two books about CMOs, both of which launched at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, MaryLee writes for the Forbes CMO Network and has remained highly active in the marketing space. She launched and leads The Conference Board's Council for CMOs, and she has been an advising member of the Marketing 50 and The CMO Club in the US. In the UK, she remains a member of the Marketing Group of Great Britain and the Marketing Society. She launched BrandPie Inc in 2014 as the sister firm to successful London-based BrandPie Ltd, a brand consultancy specializing in purpose, identity and engagement - the PIE of BrandPie.